A Change In The Guard | Environment

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Friends, we are in the midst of a global paradigm shift in health care. At the center of these changes are health and nutrition counselors, wellness coaches of various niches and specialties, acupuncturists, organic farmers, independent film makers, and the list now goes on and on. For example, healing modalities like TCM and Ayurveda are healing systems which promote health using natural, nontoxic substances and which recognizes the important role of the mind and emotions. A paradigm is a model used to explain how and why events happen the way they do, and as mankind's comprehension of the universe evolves, new paradigms emerge. The best example of paradigm shifts is in the field of modern physics. The classical Newtonian explanation of the world which for two hundred years was accepted as reality has now been replaced by quantum mechanics, superstrings, and field theory. In the old paradigm, every event had a definite cause and every action had an equal and opposite reaction. In the new paradigm, we describe events as possibilities instead of certainties and we recognize now the interconnectedness of all phenomena. The new explanation of the universe is, in a word, more holistic than the old reductionist view of explaining events in terms of separate, unrelated components.

In the same way, the medical paradigm shift which we are experiencing today represents a movement toward holism. The old medical paradigm viewed the human being as a machine, with separate systems, organs, tissues; it separated mind and body into distinct categories. The new paradigm acknowledges the mutual interdependence of the physical body, mind, emotion, and the environment in creating health and disease. Neither is there separation in the emerging face of medicine between physician and patient. The new paradigm has removed the absolute authority from the doctor and has re-fashioned a model of shared responsibility between patient and physician, or in other ways - man to earth, father to son, me to you.